Shock mounts are well known and have taken a wide variety of different forms. Such shock mounts are designed to protect or isolate components from applied external forces. Excessive applied forces tend to deflect and damage the components involved and therefore require attenuation of shock loadings.
In shipping critical parts, it is generally desirable to include suitable shock mounts inside of the containers including the components. Sometimes it is important that the shock mounts be included on skids or other carriers where the components are often subjected to movements involving high forces.
One of the problems associated with many shock mounts is that they have different spring rates and consequently different isolation characteristics and resonant frequencies in different directions of loading. For example, a typical shock mount may have a rate in compression which is five times the rate in shear.
The direction sensitive characteristic presents a problem if a component must be isolated from shock and vibration in any direction since the response will not be uniform resulting in excessive force or excessive deflections in the system.
Another problem in present shock mounts is that they are generally designed to handle one weight of component for a given response. This limits the use of the shock mounts to a specific piece of equipment or component.